Cinequest 2015: festival recap

THE CENTER
THE CENTER

A pronounced overall success, Cinequest 2015 delivered hearty audience-pleasers from a varied and satisfying menu that featured some real gems from the indie, documentary and world cinema categories.

The fest kicked off with two huge popular successes: the feel-good BATKID BEGINS and the hilariously dark WILD TALES, and kept up the pace throughout the first weekend with an assortment of successful premieres.

Cinequest’s Director of Programming Mike Rabehl presented a fest especially rich in first features, including:

  • THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult; and especially promising debut from filmmaker Charlie Griak.
  • ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters (actually a second feature).
  • IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN: Unexpectedly sweet, this starts out with a Boys Behaving Badly set-up and then morphs into a tribute to enduring love.  A festival surprise hit.
  • FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON: A good-natured Belgian comedy containing some very innovative nuggets.

 

CORN ISLAND
CORN ISLAND

Cinequest’s international film scout Charlie Cockey came through once again with the fest’s best film, the transcendent Georgian drama CORN ISLAND, which won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Drama.

 

ASPIE SEEKS LOVE
ASPIE SEEKS LOVE

This 2015 fest was the strongest recent Cinequest for documentaries. The well-deserved Jury Award for best Documentary went to ASPIE SEEKS LOVE, the story of a surprisingly sympathetic subject. Other excellent docs included:

 

Not every film was a home run.  Director John Boorman’s personal appearance was a hit, but his QUEEN AND COUNTRY was only moderately entertaining.  And the eagerly awaited  CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (Cesar-winning Kristen Stewart) and the Sundance award-winning SLOW WEST were clunkers.

Richard von Busack, the highly respected local film critic, picked Tuesday night’s L’ATALANTE:, rarely seen on the big screen. It’s the 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. A packed house agreed that this was one of Cinequest 2015’s top experiences.

Other highlights included the Belgian romantic dramedy THREE HEARTS, the French comedy GEMMA BOVERY and the exceptionally well-directed Kosovan drama THREE WINDOWS AND A HANGING.

The most underrated movie at Cinequest? Somehow, the biting darkly hilarious Mexican social satire LOS HAMSTERS is flying under the radar. I think this tale of a dysfunctional family is both very smart and very funny.

BARCO Escape showcased developing three-screen technology to envelope the audience in the cinematic experience.  I have reservations about the BARCO experience, but the short film WITHDRAWAL was a definite winner.

Here’s all my Cinequest coverage – with several features and comments on over twenty-five movies – conveniently linked on one page.

WILD TALES
WILD TALES

Cinequest picks for Tuesday, March 3

THE CENTER
THE CENTER

The final (scheduled) screenings of these gems are today:

  • THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult.
  • DIRTY BEAUTIFUL: An American indie comedy that is decidedly NOT a by-the-numbers battle of the sexes.
  • FACTORY BOSS: I haven’t yet seen this narrative about the manager of a Chinese sweatshop factory getting squeezed, but I’ve hearing good things around the fest. One of my friends, who has been to factories in Shenzen, entered a screening a little late and initially mistook it for a documentary.

Tonight is the eagerly awaited L’ATALANTE, rarely seen on the big screen. It’s the 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. Richard von Busack, the highly respected film critic for Metro, will receive a Media Legacy Award at the screening.

I also liked the documentary THERE WILL BE NO STAY, a powerful examination of American capital punishment from the perspective of the executioners.

See you around the fest. You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.

Cinequest Picks for Sunday, March 1

CORN ISLAND
CORN ISLAND

Cinephiles need to see the exquisite and lyrical Georgian drama CORN ISLAND. If it’s not the best contemporary art movie at Cinequest, I’ll be shocked.  Today’s other best picks:

  • CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: The ever-radiant Juliette Binoche plays an actress now relegated to the older role in her breakthrough play, with her younger role going to Kristen Stewart (All About Eve, anyone?). And Stewart just became the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar) for this performance.
  • THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult.
  • DIRTY BEAUTIFUL: An American indie comedy that is decidedly NOT a by-the-numbers battle of the sexes.
  • ASPIE SEEKS LOVE: A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a guy looking for love like anyone else, but whose social skills are handicapped by Asberger’s.
  • THE CENTER
    THE CENTER

Cinequest Picks for Saturday, February 28

ANTOINE ET MARIE
ANTOINE ET MARIE

Here are my picks for Saturday at Cinequest:

  • ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters. US PREMIERE.
  • DIRTY BEAUTIFUL: An American indie comedy that is decidedly NOT a by-the-numbers battle of the sexes. WORLD PREMIERE.
  • FEVER: A French thrill killer thriller (say that quickly three times) strengthened by Julie-Marie Parmentier’s performance as a witness to the crime.

Cinequest 2015 – festival preview

CinequestIt’s time to dive into the 2015 version of the San Jose film festival Cinequest running from tomorrow through March 8.  This year’s program looks GREAT.  You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page (which you may wish to bookmark).  Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.

Here are my 18 best bets at Cinequest 2015:

  • WILD TALES: the darkly comic Argentine collection of revenge stories. Wild Tales has been a festival hit (Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance) around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.  One of its vignettes features one of my favorite screen actors, Ricardo Darin (the Argentine Joe Mantegna).  See it at Cinequest before it gets to Bay Area art houses on March 6.  Ann Thompson (Thompson on Film) will be receiving a Media Legacy Award at the screening.
  • CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA:   The ever-radiant Juliette Binoche plays an actress now relegated to the older role in her breakthrough play, with her younger role going to Kristen Stewart (All About Eve, anyone?).  And Stewart just became the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar) for  this performance.
  • ’71:  Everybody says that this thriller about a British soldier trapped overnight in a hostile Northern Ireland neighborhood during the Troubles is pedal-to-the-metal intensity.
  • SLOW WEST:  This offbeat Western with Michael Fassbender won a prize at Sundance.
  • QUEEN AND COUNTRY:  Director John Boorman’s Korean War-Era quasi-sequel to his Hope and Glory.  Boorman (Deliverance) will appear at the screening.  Silicon Valley release on March 6.
  • L’ATALANTE: The 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion.  Richard von Busack, the highly respected film critic for Metro, will receive a Media Legacy Award at the screening.

Here are my pre-festival picks from among the films that I’ve seen:

DRAMA:

  • ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters.
  • THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult.

COMEDY:

  • LOS HAMSTERS: A biting darkly hilarious Mexican social satire.
  • DIRTY BEAUTIFUL: An American indie comedy that is decidedly NOT a by-the-numbers battle of the sexes.

DOCUMENTARY:

  • ASPIE SEEKS LOVE: A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a guy looking for love like anyone else, but whose social skills are handicapped by Asberger’s.
  • MEET THE HITLERS: Tracking down real people burdened with the Fuhrer’s name, this successful doc weaves together both light-hearted and very dark story threads.
  • SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM: A character-driven take on the sports movie takes us into a Nerd Olympics.

I’ve also gotten tips from insiders about some other very promising films (that I haven’t seen yet):

  • CORN ISLAND: Reportedly transcendent Georgian drama.
  • FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON: Hungarian comedy.
  • GUARD DOG: dark and violent Peruvian thriller. US premiere.
  • MILWAUKEE: US indie sex and relationship comedy. World premiere.
  • THREE WINDOWS AND A HANGING:  Searing Kosovan drama.

Take a look at the program and the passes and tickets. (If you want to support Silicon Valley’s most important cinema event while skipping the lines, the $100 donation for Express Line Access is an awesome deal.) You can download the Festival Guide from this page.

Cinequest: DIRTY BEAUTIFUL

DIRTY BEAUTIFUL
DIRTY BEAUTIFUL

OK – so down-on-his-luck guy meets a potty-mouthed vixen when she LITERALLY jumps into his car.  But Dirty Beautiful is NOT your run-of-the-mill mumblecore romantic comedy!

What elevates Dirty Beautiful is that writer-director Tim Bartell has invented two characters that we’re not used to seeing.  The guy and the gal each has a unique neediness that drives this offbeat battle of the sexes.

The guy is really a talented storyboard artist, but he THINKS that he is a screenwriter, which means that he spends his days not actually screenwriting, but shuffling and reshuffling his notecards.  He’s drawing just enough storyboards to afford food, an apartment next to the garbage, a couple of unwashed t-shirts and a car that can’t even “make it to the 405”.  And he’s oddly yearning to HAVE a girlfriend (but not prowling for sex with a woman who could turn into a girlfriend).  Instead he aches to have a girlfriend primarily for the status of having a girlfriend.

She has been homeless, would mainline tequila if she could, and is, well, a HANDFUL.  She’s been damaged by experiences in her past, and brings extreme volatility into his all too predictable lifestyle.  And she exposes the fantasy that is trapping him in professional and personal limbo.

All in all, Dirty Beautiful is a hoot.  Plus there’s the occasional memorable dialogue, like “Hey, girls that give hand jobs can be great moms. God!”

Cinequest is hosting Dirty Beautiful’s world premiere on Saturday night February 28 at 9:30 in Camera 12 with additional screenings on March 1 and March 3.

[MILD SPOILER: When the relationship becomes belligerent, each tries to hunker down and try to outlast the other.  That’s not just for the plot, it’s because there’s something about each character ’s neediness that makes them dig in.]